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Book Description
This 1942 novel describes a middle-class Edinburgh woman who
decides, radically, that she must run her house without help and do her own
cooking; the war is in the background and foreground.
decides, radically, that she must run her house without help and do her own
cooking; the war is in the background and foreground.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This entertaining novel is set in Edinburgh during WWII. I don't think I've read another novel set in Scotland during this time. I hadn't realised they were under threat of bombing as London and other parts of England were. Rose Fairlaw is a middle-class woman who realises she can no longer find servants (the first chapter set in an employment agency is very funny). She deicdes she will do all her own housework, which was a much more serious undertaking then than it would be now. Apart from the physical drudgery, there were the social implications. I enjoyed the domestic details very much, and I thought the satire on middle-class domesticity trying to cope without servants was wonderful. Mrs Childe, the daily help who consents to pop in for two hours a day, was just perfect and her efforts to train Rose were very funny. Grannie Don't Chah See (a relation of Rose's friend, Linda) was priceless. The wartime setting was also very well-done. Rose and Stuart's marriage was really one of convenience, and this was another intersting aspect of the book. Rose's first husband was killed in WWI and Stuart's first wife died shortly after. They marry to provide a family for her daughter, Flora and his son, Mickie. They have a son, Tom, together. The problems of living without servants may seem quaint today but the dilemmas of the blended family are just as relevant now as in the 40s. The mother-daughter relationship of Rose and Flora was very realistic. Flora's feelings of abandonment because of her mother's love for Mickie, were very understandable, even though she never grew out of those feelings of self-pity and her sense of herself as an outsider. Psychologically it rang true to me. I could feel Rose's misery that all her efforts to love her daughter just weren't enough. Flora reminded me of Alex in E M Delafield's Consequences, although luckily for Flora, her fate isn't as grim. The friendship of Rose and Linda was also very touching, especially the conversation they have about Linda's son, Geordie's, death. I did have trouble with the tone of the book at times. I felt Peck couldn't decide what kind of novel she was writing.
Was it a satire? was it a family drama? was it a comedy? However, I read this in one long Sunday afternoon session, as I do with most Persephone novels. They really are the most addictively readable books.
Was it a satire? was it a family drama? was it a comedy? However, I read this in one long Sunday afternoon session, as I do with most Persephone novels. They really are the most addictively readable books.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
It would be interesting to read this book alongside the newly published Virginia Woolf and the Servants by Alison Light: it is about a woman who does her own housework during the war - because she cannot find a servant - and in this respect looks forward to the second half of the twentieth century rather than back to the first. Nor is Rose, the heroine, resentful because she does her own cooking and cleaning, in fact she feels as though she is doing something rather new and original, which (for a woman of her type) she was. Yet she discovers she is surprisingly exhausted; and also she accepts the stupidity of many of the domestic conventions she used to make such efforts to perpetuate. The novel is funny even though the tragedies of the war are ever-present; and there is the unusual theme of Rose's daughter being angry and miserable and how they both deal with it. Although this book is not brillliantly written I could see why Penelope Fitzgerald loved it. (Other books with which it can be compared are The Diary of a Provincial Lady by EM Delafield and One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes; the first is about a woman who, like Virginia Woolf, cannot imagine doing her own housework and the second is about another woman who has to adjust, post-war, to not having servants any more.)
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
'Housebound' affords the reader a fascinating glimpse into the life of a middle class houswife in the nineteen-forties. We share the consternation of the main character Rose Fairlaw at having to cope alone in her large old-fashioned house when her servants leave to do war work. Labour saving gadgets had not been invented, and husbands did not dream of lending a hand! In addition, she and her best friend Linda have to cope with the strain of their adult sons joining the forces. More universal is the portrayal of relationships within families, and we see Rose struggle with the fact that she loves her charming stepson more than her own difficult daughter. Although a period piece, Peck's novel still grips the modern reader.
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